


trains don't come around here anymore

by sporklift



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Abusive Parent, Angst, Book References, Cancer, Eddie Kaspbrak-centric, Implied Prescription Drug Abuse, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Sexual Content, Uncomfortable relationship to bodily fluids, medical anxiety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2021-01-29 04:51:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21404494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sporklift/pseuds/sporklift
Summary: Last time Eddie Kaspbrak escaped Derry, he swore he'd never come back. Then Ma got sick.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 34
Kudos: 308
Collections: It Faves





	trains don't come around here anymore

**Author's Note:**

> Deviations from Canon: While I was writing, I was imagining this taking place in a canon-compliant universe where the Losers forget about It, but not about each other. But, really, you can put it in any 'verse you see fit; you do you. 
> 
> This author knows _nothing_ about cars. Nada. Please excuse any egregious errors in that regard.

**November 2001 **

On Tuesdays, Eddie Kaspbrak has an extra long lunch. He drives down to the Derry Public Library with his dry wheat-bread, deli turkey and tomato sandwich. And on this particular shit-cold Tuesday in November, he scrapes a chair across the old wood floor up to the circulation desk and says, “Well, the fucking car won’t stop stalling.” 

“_Again_?” Mike Hanlon looks up from his computer, backing away on a wheeled desk chair. 

“Yeah. It’s fourteen fucking years old. There’s no reason to keep pushing the engine. It’s so fucking stupid.” 

“Can you just...sneak into the garage at night and fix it up? Like normal?” 

Eddie gnaws on his lip. He fiddles with the scrap of lettuce between slices of bread. It’s slimy. Which is odd, because there’s no condiments. But, nevertheless, tries to shrug it off. “I think it’s getting a little beyond what I know how to do.” 

In high school, for about a month, Eddie had wanted to go part-time at the Derry Career-Technical Center. He’d wanted to take automotive classes in the afternoons, instead of personal finance or French or any of the other pointless bullshit electives. His mother crumpled at the permission slip the moment Eddie brought it home. _Why would you want to do something so dangerous and dirty, sweetheart? _It wasn’t as open-ended a question, Eddie knew, as it seemed.

And so, Eddie took personal finance and he took French and, with a spirited urge to rebel, driver’s education. (He told his mother he was taking SAT prep and forged her signatures. Richie Tozier had been his driving partner. Eddie picked up on the kinesthetics faster, but there was never a dull moment in that class.) For whatever it was worth, he taught himself as much as he could when it came to fixing cars. He’d been keeping their P.O.S Oldsmobile running longer than it - realistically - should. 

And now, he’s gone and dried up his well of knowledge. 

Mike frowns. He’s, maybe, sympathetic to the idea that effort is only half the equation. “Shit, man. I’m sorry.” 

“Yeah. Well. I just don’t know what she expects.” Eddie bites into the wheat bread and swallows his mouthful of sandwich before he does on. “I still need to drive her to the hospital five fucking times a week. I can’t do that without a working car.” 

“Is it time to shop around for a new one?” 

“I guess.” 

It’ll be necessary. If Eddie had any actual say in the matter, he’d be saving up for his next apartment. Maybe he won’t even go back to New York. Someplace new, in some big dizzying Elsewhere. Beverly lives in Chicago. Maybe Eddie could move there. Or Boston or Philadelphia. Hell - maybe the West Coast, even. Bill lives in California. Richie does, too. Eddie isn’t choosy. He’d just be saving up for Elsewhere with enough of a sizable amount of road between him and his hometown. But, he doesn’t exactly have that luxury. 

Chewing his sandwich, working through the dryness of the bread and the slimy tomato there, Eddie swallows and asks. “You’re not selling any cars this weekend, are you?” 

Mike shakes his head. “Just an old tractor. If you can use that, it’s yours.” 

Eddie laughs. He can nearly see it: rolling up to the Derry Home Hospital in a fucking tractor. He’d have to attach a sidecar for Ma. They’d crawl down Main Street, a whole ten miles per hour. Kids would pass by on their fucking Huffys. Maybe that’s the silver lining with the car. At least it can get up to forty-five miles per hour. When it runs at all, that is. 

“That reminds me,” Mike rolls his chair over to the printer. He picks up a small stack of papers and slides right on back over. The papers ruffle as they hit the circulation desk. He pauses. “You sure it’s okay to put these up in the bank?” 

“Yeah, it’s fine.” Eddie waves his hands and picks up a flyer. Even if it wouldn't be fine, there’s a bulletin board in the lobby with almost no oversight. Eddie’s removed at least three solicitations and fake ads in the past month alone. One flyer for an estate sale? Shouldn’t be a problem. 

Eddie has to hand it to Mike. It might be on shitty communal library printing paper, but it’s clear and professional. There’s a photograph of the old Hanlon farm and an abridged list of furniture and farm equipment with a teasing optimism, yelling in a bold, serifed **“& MUCH MORE!” **

And, Mike’s been working so hard, anyway, to make sure everything’s official and ready for the sale. Eddie doesn’t know how he does it. It’s been six months since Leroy Hanlon died, and while it might seem like Mike’s been dragging his feet to get all the affairs sorted, Eddie can’t blame him. 

How does a person even startto rifle through the scraps of another person’s life? How does somebody decide what goes to cousins and what goes to perfect strangers and what’s too private to go anywhere but into a bonfire? 

That is to say: Mike’s been handling everything well, even if it’s taken a few months. 

Sighing away a surprise headache, Eddie reaches into his pocket. He pops an ibuprofen and swallows it dry. 

Mike frowns but says, “Thanks, man. I appreciate it.” 

“Well, there’s not a whole lot else I can do.” 

“It’ll be okay. You don’t even have to come over when you get out, if you don’t want to.” 

Eddie rolls his eyes. “I’m fucking coming. Just. When I can.” 

“That’s more than fair.” Mike smiles. His eyes twinkle when he does. 

Sometimes, Eddie can’t believe that Mike’s stayed in Derry. Not that he’s about to jinx himself by thinking too hard about it. Eddie doesn’t know what he’d do with these extra long Tuesday lunch breaks if he was all alone in Derry. 

Usually, Eddie stays longer than it takes him to finish his sandwich. They’ll talk more. About cars, or football, or the sale, or even the fucking weather. About anything but chemo and pills and insurance copays and sanitization. But, today, by the time he’s finished his sandwich, he needs the extra time. He has to walk. 

(He used to have time to walk himself everywhere. And, when he didn’t have time to walk, he had time to bike. He used to use that time to spend every hour he could with his friends. 

Sometimes it’d be all seven of them, curled into that clubhouse deathtrap Ben so lovingly made them. As they got older, that just stopped. Sometimes, they’d be sets or trios, and they’d make that work. Eddie would spread his time studying with Stanley or Ben, walking in the woods with Bev, working on soapbox cars with Mike, lazy Saturday afternoons reading comics with Richie, watching Bill draw and wondering with a kind of ecstatic bewilderment where exactly he learned to make lines so intricate.) 

Eddie’s used to, across the board, having more time than this. It’s bizarre to sacrifice the time he usually spends with Mike, to walk back across town, all the way back to the New England Bank. 

It isn’t the worst job in the world. It’s much less hectic than Eddie’s old job, although he’s making about ten thousand less a year than he was making in Manhattan. But it’s clean and it’s predictable and it’s so easy to get settled. Eddie punches in and fusses with bills and checks and listens to the sifting click of the clock on the far wall. 

And, while it’s ticking, he has to stay put. He stands behind a desk. He has to wait for people to come up to him so he can cash their checks. He isn’t even authorized to open bank accounts. But he can handle the money. His mother’s voice, deep in his head, reminds him to watch his hands every hour. _You never know where those dollar bills have been…_

Sometimes, well-meaning people with overzealous intentions come in. They ask about loans or mortgages. Eddie has to reroute them to the banker, and he wishes he could tell them about the statistics and the variables. How, no, maybe you really need to think this through. Especially when you, say, buy a condemned Victorian and have no electrical skills to speak of. 

But that’s not his job anymore. 

Not that Eddie’s old New York job had been so great, anyway. They’d all been fucking assholes in the end. 

When Eddie told his boss about his ma, he’d gotten the sack. Mr. Ullman hadn’t even given Eddie enough time to let him put in his two-weeks. No time to leave with any kind of quiet dignity. That wasn’t what Business accounted for. 

Instead, it was all, “_Oh, your mother’s dying? Mucinous adenocarcinoma? Oh! That sounds serious. Let us know if there’s anything we can do!” _Until it was _“You have to go back to Maine? You’re _actually_ going?” _and then it was “_You’re fucking fired, Kaspbrak.” _

And, maybe it didn’t go down with those exact words. But the sentiment was the same. All Eddie could do was load up his nameplate, his binder, and pill organizer into a cardboard box. That was that. 

He wasn’t supposed to be in New York anyway. The city wasn’t a good place to be, not the kind of sweet backwater place for guys like him to end up. 

It was dangerous, too. Everyone had been worried for months there was going to be another attack. Ma kept him on the phone for hours, on that day back in September. He’d missed calls from all his friends, too. There wasn’t even the time to be scared for himself, over his mother’s heavy whimpers, living in New York during the frenzy of it. 

But, even that wasn’t enough to send him back to Maine. No, it’d take a lot more than impending World War III to send Eddie all the way back up I-95, screaming for his mommy. 

Months later, and it wasn’t World War III, but he was leaving New York anyway. His mother sobbed on the other end of the phone line. 

If he thinks really hard about it, he thinks he remembers a glimmer of satisfaction, somewhere hidden behind the tears. But that’s ridiculous. 

A bad diagnosis got her little Eddie-Bear way from the dirty subways and rude cab drivers and sex perverts lurking in alleyways and airplanes crashing into World Trade Centers. But, it’s not as though she grew the tumors in her guts just to net him back in. 

Because - either way - he’s back. He’s back, and he clocks out of his dreary job at the New England Bank at six on the nose. He has to restart the car twice, but makes it home without incident. The sky is dark, and a dusty layer of snow settled on the ground, maybe three hours ago. 

At the door, Eddie scrapes the late-autumn-snowy-wet from his shoes. He turns to hang his coat on its usual peg. The same one he’s used since his old one-piece snowsuit. (He was seven when he was finally able to reach it. He’d been stupidly proud that he was able to hang his own coat, breathlessly asserting what a big kid he was while Ma made him hot chocolate with cinnamon and a tablespoon of cough syrup.) 

“Did your feet get wet?” Ma calls from the darkness. Eddie jumps. He hadn’t seen her settled in her chair. Her face lolls, lethargic, from one side of the headrest to the other. “You always get so sick when you get your feet wet. You need to be careful_.” _

“I was. It’s just snow.” 

“It doesn’t matter where it _came_ _from_. You still got your feet wet. Go and take a vitamin C so I won’t worry.” She chokes and sputters and - a moment more - big shining tears roll down her cheeks, lingering down the curve of her second chin. Eddie’s falling on the edge of the couch nearest her the moment he can see their shine. Mother goes on: “I know you don’t care that I worry, but you could at least _notice _and try to be better about it_.” _

_You’re hurting her. _

_She’s dying and you’re the thing that’s hurting her. _

“It’s not that, Ma.” Eddie sighs. “It’s just been a long day at work.” 

“That isn’t an excuse, Eddie!” 

“I know. I’m sorry.” 

His mother swallows back her big tears and nods. She’s satisfied, for now at least. Eddie can see the purple bruises snaking around the broad circumference of her arm. She shifts in her chair and says, “There’s a pot roast in the slow cooker. Fix me a plate, won’t you, sweetie?” 

Eddie nods, dutifully as he can, and treks to the kitchen. On the stove, a thick layer of bacon fat hardened in the frying pan. It’s cold from the length of the day it’s been forgotten. Thick and white and greasy. 

Unthinkingly, Eddie fists a paper towel and scoops the fat away until he can touch the Teflon at the bottom of the pan. The mass seeps through the towel. It bleeds into his palm with thick salty whiteness. 

Eddie swallows. Suddenly repulsed, he hurls the paper towel into the trash can. He uses dish soap to scrub the stain from his fingers before he can even think about bringing down the plates from the cupboard. 

After he’s done, though, he can. The plates have flowers and lambs dancing on the borders. 

During the summer Eddie was twelve, he’d had a hell of a time getting to sleep. He’d close his eyes and all he’d see were sunken, sickly black eyes. Open wounds. Black bile vomit. Sharp yellow teeth behind a blood-red grin…

The pediatrician told him to count sheep. When that didn’t work, Ma gave him a Sominex. 

(Eddie doesn’t know, even now, if the Sominex was real. Most of the pills back then weren’t. But, Eddie was able to sleep for the rest of 1989. So, whether it was sugar or diphenhydramine, what did it matter? It worked.) 

He plates two servings of the roast without thinking much more about the grease. There are carrots and beef and potatoes and hearty dark broth. It seeps into the upturned edges of the plate, lapping up against the lambs’ hooves. He ignores the rest of the leftover breakfast dishes and returns to his mother’s easy chair. 

Eddie slides the clutter of books and old bowls and bottles of nail polish from the end table and places his mother’s plate down. He balances his own on his knee. The food is still too hot. And so, he’ll let it sit for at least a moment more. Skewering a piece of beef on his fork, he blows. 

⁂ 

There’s a line at the front when Eddie comes back from his lunch break on Friday. It’s only about four or five people, but it might as well be out the door. People get finicky - _demanding - _when they won’t be able to get their cash exactly when and how they need it. Three individual people have already yelled at Eddie today. It isn’t _their_ anger, but that of the head bankers - staring at him through the fingerprint-cloudy glass walls of their offices, that makes the hair on Eddie’s neck stand on end. 

The antacid he took with lunch today is, already, failing him. He groans silently to himself, slips the placard asking patrons to _PLEASE USE THE NEXT WINDOW _below, and braces himself for the fray. 

“I can help who’s next!” 

The first is a mousy old woman. She needs a money order because she’s getting her roof patched, she tells him. Back in the day, Eddie remembers how Ben used to affix tarp scraps to the roof of the clubhouse. The woman gets her money order with no fuss, and Eddie moves on to the next patron. 

This time, it’s a man in an Oxford shirt. He has a goatee and beady green eyes and he says, “I need to deposit fifty dollars of this check into my savings, a hundred of it into my checking, and I need the last fifty in cash.” 

Eddie says, “Have you filled out your deposit slips?” 

“No. Just look me up.” The man throws his driver’s license at Eddie. It hits him on the forearm and bounces off the counter. Eddie has to bend down to retrieve it. The man goes on, “You should be able to just remember what I want.” 

And, sure, Eddie _can_. That’s not the point. The expression Eddie’s wearing has nothing whatsoever to do with his memory. 

He types into the computer and waits for the check to process. It clicks and spins, and - after much too long a wait, it goes through. Eddie slams Ulysses S. Grant on the table, smiles through his teeth, and thinks, ‘_Now get the fuck out,’ _as he says, “Have a nice day.” 

Patrons like that always make his chest tight. His lungs restrict. There’s part of him that feels stupid taking a hit from his aspirator. There’s nothing there. Really, truthfully, nothing there. Nothing but water and the bitter taste it leaves in the back of his throat. 

It could be arsenic for all he cares. It calms his fucking nerves. And that’s the issue he’s dealing with at the moment. He can’t go beyond that, not while his heart races and he’s about to see red. 

But it’s not exactly professional. So, he turns around to yank the red plastic out of his pocket. He pulls the trigger - _bang - _and the faux-medicinal taste hits the back of his throat. And, if he gives it a second, he’ll start to breathe easy again. 

Then, a voice from behind him. 

“Shit. _Eddie? _That you?” 

Eddie spins around, aspirator red in his hands. On the other side of the fingerprint-smudged bank countertop, stands Richie Tozier. He’s a tall as always, blinking at him through thick-rimmed glasses, the lower half of his face dotted with stubble -- 

_“Think I’d look sexy with, like, a fucking mustache? Like the guys in stag films?” _

\-- and Richie smiles. His mouth is wide and open. “What the fuck, man?” 

From behind him in line, some granny whispers something unapproving and frazzled under her breath. 

Eddie blinks. His collar, suddenly, feels tight. Why’d he do the top button? Richie’s going to ask him, ‘_Who even does their top button_?’ Eddie’s not thinking as he pulls the top one loose. “What are you doing here?” 

Richie holds up a small paper. “Gotta cash a check.” 

“No, Einstein. I meant in Derry.” 

“Oh. I’m helping Mike out with the estate sale.” 

Eddie blinks. “He...he didn’t mention you were coming to help him with that.” 

“He didn’t mention you were in town. Or that you’re working here. What happened? You roosting or somethin’?” 

“I’m just...here to help with Ma.” Before Eddie can stop himself, he adds: “It’s just temporary. I’m going back once she’s...” _Buried. Decomposed--Don't fucking think like that! _“Set.” 

Eddie wonders if Richie believes him, even if he nods. “Fuck. That’s right. How’s she holding up?” 

“About as well as you’d expect,” Eddie says, quickly. Redirecting, he asks, “Did you bring Sandy with you?” 

The few times Eddie’s met Richie’s girlfriend, he hasn’t been able to come up with much of an opinion of her. She’s pretty. She’s tall. She’s a quick talker and has this annoying ability to redirect _all _of Richie’s attention onto her, even during conversations that are supposed to be more collaborative. But she’s fine. She’s a perfectly nice person. She’s fine. Eddie will be used to her, by the next time he sees her. She’s fine. It’s fine. Everything’s fine. 

But Richie frowns. He scratches at the back of his neck. “Oh. Um. Sandy's ...she's not in the picture anymore.” 

“I’m sorry,” Eddie lies. He’s unsure why he needs to. 

“It’s okay. Turns out, we were actually kinda shitty for each other.” Richie looks sad, for a moment, he looks down to his feet. Far away. Probably back in California. “I’d still fuck her if she asked, though.” 

Eddie rolls his eyes and types Richie’s account numbers into the computer before Richie can say anything else inappropriate in his place of employment. He’s surprised Richie still has an account in New England, but figures it’s none of his business. 

Granny coughs. She taps her foot. Eddie would recognize the hit of a shoe on laminate anywhere. 

Richie sighs for Granny's benefit, and it’s so overdramatic that Eddie almost - not quite, but _almost_ \- laughs. “Hey, why don’t you take a smoke break, Eds?” 

“I don’t fucking smoke, Richie. You should fucking know that.” 

Richie shrugs. “Take one anyway.” 

Sometimes, when they were young, Richie wouldn’t have the attention span to sit through calc. He’d ask them to cut class and kick up water from the riverbanks instead. Sometimes, Eddie came along. Usually, though, it was Beverly or Bill. 

Eddie’s biting on his lip. He stops the second he realizes. He’ll chap them and the flu will seep in through the cuts. 

“I just took lunch,” He says, taking Richie’s check. His signature scrawls, all chicken-scratch and hard pressure. It looks like Richie, even if it’s signed _RICHARD W. TOZIER. _

(Yes, that’s _technically _Richie’s name. But Richie never acted like a Richard. Not even once. The full name feels dishonest. Incomplete. Like all those voices he used to try to do. He’d gotten a lot better at them, last they spoke. Eddie used to be able to hear Richie through the voices, and he can’t anymore. And, somehow, just like Richie’s full name, it - incomprehensibly - feels like a lie.) 

“D’you know if anyone else is in town?” Eddie asks, waiting for the check to process through the machine. 

Richie shakes his head. “Don’t think so, but fuck if I know. I guess we’ll see, huh?” 

“I guess,” Eddie nods and ducks his head to count out the cash. 

He counts it back to Richie and Richie’s fingers slip against Eddie’s knuckles when the money exchanges hands. He stands, awkwardly, thereafter. 

“Are you gonna be there, tomorrow?” 

Eddie nods. “Later though.” 

“Okay, cool. I’ll see you then.” 

And he shuffles out of the line, waving the hand full of cash as he exits. Eddie rolls his eyes and shakes his head and has to tear his eyes away and ask Granny to repeat herself when she tells him what she wants. 

⁂ 

Ma isn’t doing well tonight. She’s nauseous. All she’s done is sleep, and hasn’t felt well enough to eat all day. A new rash blooms on her neck, down past the square-collar of her nightdress.

Eddie tries to make her toast and he can see when he passes the plate, the places where her nail polish has rubbed off. Her nails are cracked. He swallows, hard, and presses a light kiss to her retreating hairline. It’ll be smooth soon. So soon. 

There’s a rerun of _Little House on the Prairie _on the TV. Ma stares at the screen, glassy-eyed, biting into the toast. She chews with painful lethargy and Eddie makes himself look away. 

On the screen, Laura Ingalls pans for gold in a small creek. It’s smaller than the Barrens, that little TV creek. And, if Eddie recalls correctly, the whole ordeal ends up with nothing other than fool’s gold. And - _yeah. _If the only treasures Eddie was able to find with his friends were mudstone and scrapes and bruises, that dinky little creek on TV couldn’t dream of anything half so satisfying. 

\-- satisfying like the cool underground of the clubhouse. Beverly’s tobacco smoke curling through the space with carcinogens and a friendly, musical laugh. Ben’s hammering a post into the foundation, nowhere near up to safety code. Mike dreaming up futures he hasn’t yet see. Stanley bringing extra tarps with him when it got rainy. Richie’s gross Dorito-dusted hand resting on Eddie’s calf --

The episode ends and Eddie’s memory, turns out, is correct: fool’s gold after all. 

⁂ 

Eddie waits, watches silently, while the nurses secure the needles into his mother’s arms. Ma winces and yelps as they maneuver her limbs. It’d be impossible for them to avoid any place not dotted with bruises, not at this point, but there isn’t any resolution to the suffering. Nothing to do but sit and wait. 

It’s not long before she’s blowing her guts out. 

Eddie holds what’s left of her hair back. It’s stringy and falling out in clumps. With his free hand, he pats her swollen shoulders. 

“It’s okay, Mama,” He murmurs, suppressing the heave threatening to roll his diaphragm. He can see the putrid brown sick slosh in the bucket. Bile burns in his throat and he has to swallow it down. “You only have one more hour in this cycle.” 

_This cycle. _And there are so many more to come. The oncologist isn’t optimistic. 

Optimistic or pessimistic, Eddie is going to have to sit here and hold her hand and wait for her to turn sickly and pale and look just like his dad, all those years ago. 

Or, at least Eddie thinks. He hadn’t been allowed in Frank’s chemotherapy suite; he’d been too young. But he’d sat on plastic red chairs in waiting rooms and played with his crayons and sat by as his father faded into his skeleton. 

Ma dabs the side of her mouth with stiff hospital paper-towels. She’s all sweaty. “It’s poison, Eddie. They’re poisoning me.” 

“It’s how they get rid of the cancer.” 

Her lips start to quiver. Tears well up in her eyes. They spill over her cheeks. Blubbering out a sob, she covers her mouth with a clammy hand. The cannula stretches, but she doesn’t wince over the tears. “You won’t leave me again, won’t you, Eddie?” 

“I’m right here, Mommy.” 

Right here, feeling all of six inches tall. Clorox and puke fumes mix in his nose, and he has to sit in the smell, cycling through the chemicals and the poison and the vomit. 

⁂ 

When they get back home, Eddie helps his mother into her easy chair and turns the TV on. He hasn’t bothered to take his shoes off and, after running to the kitchen to grab her a glass of water, turns towards the door. 

Ma stirs in her exhaustion. “Where are you running off to in such a hurry?” 

“Mike’s having an estate sale. I’m going to help out.” Eddie pauses. “I told you about this.” 

She frowns and shakes her head in the same way she always did. The way that made Eddie feel like he was guilty of something. “Sweetheart, I need you here. What if I need something?” 

“It’s only gonna be a few hours, Mommy. And, you were just saying on the way home that you were going to take a nap.” 

“Don’t you _dare _take that tone with me. You’re an adult, Eddie. You can do what you like.” Mother sucks in through her teeth. Eddie wonders, for a moment, if she’ll throw up, and instinctively looks to the corner for the bucket. He could probably reach it in time. “I just can’t imagine why it’s so hard to spare me a thought from time to time.” 

*

He waits until his mother dozes off before he leaves. The first time Eddie twists the key in the ignition, it splutters. Then, it clicks and immediately stops, dead, in the driveway. Eddie slams his hands on the steering wheel and looks up to see if he can make out his mother’s silhouette in the window, staring at him, and waiting for him to climb back up the steps. _I changed my mind, Mommy! I don’t want to spend my evening with my old middle school chums; no sir-ee, not ever again! _

As though ‘chum’ and ‘sir-ee’ are anywhere in his vocabulary. 

Eddie tries again. Key in hand, he twists. Before the engine can click on, Eddie accelerates. With a bushy grumble, the engine starts. The wheels heave, secured in place by the brake. 

*

Eddie still remembers, with very little hesitation, the way to the old Hanlon Farm. Out in front, an overbleached Realtor’s photograph swings back and forth on the sign. Bold red font hangs steady across the top of the post. **FOR SALE BY THE DERRY REALTY COMPANY. **

There are a few cars left in the driveway. Eddie supposes the estate sale is at its end, but trots up the front stoop anyway. Mike greets him at the door. Behind him, there’s a circle of navy jackets surrounding a La-Z-Boy, a dark and scratched-up coffee table, and something that looks like a big harness (obviously from the barn). In front, Mike holds onto the doorknob and smiles down at Eddie. “I didn’t think you’d make it.” 

“Looks like I almost didn’t.” 

“There are a few stragglers yet. There are still snacks in the kitchen if you’re hungry.” 

Mike’s selling everything, it looks like. Of course, Eddie supposes, he’s taken the sentimental things for himself already. The photo albums and newspaper clippings and his favorite books. But every surface in the house has a white tag on it. It’s barren, picked clean earlier. 

There’s a dark spot on the floor where the sofa used to be. There’s a stack of books on the floor, piled haphazardly but lovingly. It doesn’t seem like Mike’s place. Granted, Eddie hadn’t come by too often, but when he did, it was always full. Full of photographs of Mike’s parents and everything in a sort of ordered chaos just the way Mike’s grandad liked it. And now, it’s not dirty and it’s not cluttered, but things are strewn all over. It’s the last hurrah of messy life before everything goes away. 

Eddie’s left to his own devices once he’s inside. Mike has to stay out in the living room and talk up some items, schmooze, and maybe even put in a good word about the property itself. So, he follows Mike’s suggestion and paces into the kitchen. 

There’s a salad bowl full of pretzel twists on the counter. Eddie can imagine how many people have stuck their hands in there. The statistics of how many people wash their hands well is staggering. And, as such, Eddie won’t touch them with a ten-foot pole. But he does skewer a strawberry on a toothpick. That much, he figures, is safe. 

Richie’s in the kitchen, though, and when Eddie looks up from the makeshift buffet counter, he notices the hesitant, twitchy smile. It’s so impossible to know what’s going on in his head. 

And he says, “Hey, Eds,” and it does absolutely nothing to clarify what he’s thinking. 

“Hey ...you_,” _Eddie says. 

And immediately feels like an idiot. 

*

Eddie’s been here for less than an hour - and maybe just to rub it in that he’s so late - Mike’s already rejoining them in the kitchen. It’s time for the final auction. It’s a small group of people, gathered in the living room. The auction is professional and fast, and before Eddie knows, he’s helping Mike and Richie carry out chairs and the TV stand and stacks of books into various cars. Eddie reminds himself to lift from his knees and makes himself useful. 

*

When the last few people clear out, Eddie’s in the kitchen, covering the remaining guacamole in saran wrap. He runs it over to the fridge, which is mostly empty for the house’s un-lived-in-ness, but what else is he supposed to do with it? It can’t sit out on the counter all night. 

When he shuts the fridge, Richie’s there, behind the door. In spite of himself, Eddie jumps. “Shit! _Dude! _Don’t sneak up on people like that!” 

“Sorry,” Richie says through a crooked grin that doesn’t seem very sorry at all. “You’ve just been a little far away tonight. I didn’t know how else to get to you.” 

“Well. I’m literally just trying to be helpful to Mike, so.” Eddie walks back over to the counter. He’s not sure what to do with the pretzel bowl. He doesn’t want to contaminate the rest of the plastic bag, but there are still enough there that it’d be wasteful to throw them out.

\-- _Don’t be ungrateful, Eddie-Bear. Finish your plate. Don’t act too high-and-mighty for your own ma’s cooking - you know how that hurts me. _

Richie, with one hand on the top of the fridge, asks, “Whoa, there! What’s got your panties in a twist?” 

Eddie glares. “Nothing. I’m fine_.” _

“I mean, sure. Let’s just pretend I’m an idiot.” 

“Yeah, you’re right. Sitting in on my mother’s chemotherapy is tons of fun, and I should really be in a better mood right now, you _dick_.” 

“_Fuck. _I’m sorry, man.” Richie walks over to him. His hand meets Eddie’s shoulder, little circles on the bone, heavy and warm. “Are you okay?” 

“What the hell did I just say? Am I okay? Seriously? _No. _She’s dying, Richie.” 

And, what is Eddie even supposed to do with that? Ma, with her full bowls of vitamins. Ma, who tries to drown him in her tears. Ma, who protected him from his own stupid notions of himself. Ma, who he’s twice tried to escape, and twice come crawling home. 

\-- _she’s only eating me because she loves me. _

Eddie clamps himself off, facing the countertop more fully. Richie’s hand doesn’t stop drawing circles. He can feel Richie’s eyes on him. Eddie clamps down, grabs at the wooden countertop, digging his nails into the veneer. 

Ma might be dying, but she’s still alive and still going through the motions. And Eddie’s still thinking about what he’s going to do to clear out the house. There’s not much he wants to keep from her curios and bookshelves. 

\-- _no, no, no. Stop. Stop thinking like that._

He’s going to be so alone. So supremely alone when she’s finished. Sure, maybe he can move - but for what? To do what? Where will he go on Christmas Eve and Thanksgiving? What’s Mother’s Day going to feel like without wildly guessing what restaurant-dinner won’t make her cross, or the pressure of finding a perfectly lovely gift?

And she isn’t even dead yet. So why is he acting like she is? 

Tears cut through his eyes, and Eddie turns his head down, sets about pouring the pretzels back into their original bag. Fuck germs. He just needs something to do with his hands. 

“It’s...okay that you’re upset, man.” Richie’s voice cuts through the sound of Eddie pouring and shuffling his feet. 

“Yeah. Well. I’m just trying to be fucking normal for two seconds.” 

It’s hard to do that, crying into a bowl of pretzel twists. Eddie’s blinking away the burning in his eyes, and it’s just so fucking complicated. He always wanted to get away. He applied to college in Pennsylvania, but ended up going to the University of Maine, coming home damn near every weekend. He’d considered moving down South with Stanley, for a few months, but Mother burst into tears when he asked her to cosign his part of the lease. He got his job in New York, and now he’s back here. 

He’d always tried to get away and now he’s stuck for the fucking countdown? 

Is this some kind of sick penance for being such a bad son? Maybe. And now Eddie has to live with it. 

Richie mumbles something, but Eddie’s too lost in his mind to hear it. But Eddie turns his head and Richie, quietly, for once in his fucking life, brings his lips to Eddie’s forehead. 

It’s warm and sweet, and _shit shit shit, _Eddie’s going to start crying again. Instead, he rolls the bag of pretzels back up and goes to throw it in the cupboard. 

Nobody lives here. It’s probably a little counterintuitive to put things away as though somebody does. Hopefully, Mike won’t be too pissed off over it. But Eddie just can’t stand the idea of putting things in boxes right now. 

“You guys okay?” 

Eddie jumps away, slamming his hip into the corner of the counter. He hisses at the burn. Mike’s frowning in the doorway.

God. Would people just stop _pitying _him for two seconds? 

Eddie nods. “Yeah. We’re fine.” 

Richie frowns, but says, “Yeah,” and then, “So, what’s next?” 

*

They finish, carrying out boxes into recycling and donation piles. It's utilitarian and mostly quiet and, Eddie thinks, that’s appropriate. And it’d be more so if Richie didn’t offer crude, half-baked observations and ideas every two seconds. Eddie prickles. Some things, really, just can’t handle his witty remarks and jokes. They’ll buckle under the weight. 

(Though, when Richie finally resigns with an off-hand grumble, _Okay, fine, I get it. Beep-beep._ Eddie misses it.) 

But, either way, they finish loading everything off. And it’s not as fun as just hanging out, but it’s necessary. 

Eddie already came late, and he doesn’t want to dip out so immediately. But he can just _see _his mother, heavy-lidded squinting eyes, waiting up for him. _You didn’t tell me you were leaving. What are you hiding? _

By now she must have woken up from her nap. Eddie figures she must have found the note he left behind. But he can’t hazard a guess on how much good that’ll do. She’ll sob and say that he’d just seen them last night. _Why don’t you want to be here with me? _

It’ll be easier - infinitely - to just go home and give her the rest of the evening. That way, he has a leg to stand on if she tries to argue that he’s never around. 

And, so, with the last box in the corner, Eddie begins to say goodbye. “I’ll see you for lunch next Tuesday,” He says to Mike. And, to Richie: “When are you heading back?” 

“Monday.” 

So soon. 

Eddie nods. “Well. I guess I’ll see you when I see you.” 

“Is that how that works, Eds? Really?” 

“Oh, fuck off.” Eddie smiles, waving as he makes his way through the door. The air is cold. Snowflakes start to fall, feckless, onto the cold dirt. Eddie can see his breath and shoves his hands into his pockets until he can make his way over to the car. 

Once inside, he twists the key. It doesn’t even click. _Oh no. _Annoyed, Eddie tries again, pushing his foot onto the accelerator. Nothing. Dead on arrival. 

Once more, Eddie hopes there will be something. Some sputtering, some revving, but it’s stone-dead. Good-for-nothing iron casing, stupid engine can’t even click on when he needs it to. 

Throwing himself out of the driver’s seat, he slams the door behind him. “Fucking useless piece of shit car,” He mutters under his breath, returning - so immediately - from whence he came. 

He knocks at the door, and Mike opens it with a bewildered expression. “Everything okay?” 

“I need to call a tow truck.” 

Mike winces. “I dropped the phone service out here. Do you have a cell phone?” 

“Are you kidding? If I ever got one, Ma would never stop calling me for two minutes. Shit.” 

Richie, popping up behind Mike, and looking - comparatively - _short, _says, “I mean. I’ve got a car. I can drop you off, I guess. Hate to cut a party short, but if you need to go running home to mommy…” 

Eddie flips him off. “Are you sure your license isn’t suspended?” 

“Not as far as you know.” Richie winks, and fishes for his car keys in his pocket. He says a quick goodbye to Mike, apologizing for cutting the get-together short, and Eddie grumbles, even though he doesn’t think Richie meant anything shitty by it. And Richie turns back to him. “C’mon, Eduardo. Vamanos!” 

⁂

The car ride isn’t silent. Of course, it isn’t. Eddie’s not sure they’ve ever spent more than five minutes in silence. Even when they were twelve and spending evenings ruffling through comics, they couldn’t keep quiet for too long. Eddie’s going off about how Richie doesn’t know how to maintain lane position, and Richie’s firing back with jokes, and it feels normal and lighthearted as they cross town. 

They cross town, voices raised loud enough that Eddie’s sure someone could hear them outside. 

But, then, they’re turning the corner. They’re getting close - so dangerously close - to the residential streets. A fucking anvil falls on Eddie’s chest. His lungs are shriveling. He takes a hit off his inhaler and, without thinking, snaps, “Turn left.” 

“Don’t you live on Oak?” 

“Just turn, Richie.” 

And, although Richie’s squinting through his lenses, he does. He doesn’t use his blinker, but his calm hand-over-hand positioning in the steering wheel, slides the car around in the lane. Nobody’s on the road. And it’s only six o’clock, but with winter pressing up against the barriers of their own, the sun’s already dipped into dusk. 

Richie flicks the stick on the dash and his brights beam on. “Is this some weird fucking shortcut you never told me about before?” 

“I don’t really wanna go home right now.” Eddie has to press himself up to his window. He’s not smudging the glass, but he can feel the coldness of the window radiating onto his nose. 

He hasn’t said shit like that since he was, what, _sixteen_? What’s he doing, caressing the dusty boxes from a decade ago?

But, if Richie catches the embarrassment, he doesn’t say anything. The silence, maybe in a way, might be a miracle. And Eddie’s trying it on, but he can’t shake just how ridiculous he feels wearing it. 

Eddie’s a backseat driver for the next few minutes. He’s got half an idea in his head, and it’s not fully realized until they’re pulling off the main road and onto a dirt path. 

He’s backseat-driven them right to the trainyard. 

Or, well. The former trainyard. Trains don’t come around here anymore. There are no more locomotives rushing through Derry to make it to the coastline. It’s empty. The skeletons of the trees, lying under the light spraying of snow crusting over the leaves. The leaves and the dead overgrowth on the tracks -- 

It looks like a grave, freshly dug. Ready for the body. 

Except, he’s being stupid. It’s not a grave. 

It’s rusty iron tracks and a boneyard for scraps and nothing else. They roll to a stop on the crusty snow, underneath a tall orange street lamp. It buzzes but doesn’t flicker. 

Eddie doesn’t move to get out of the car when Richie slides the gear shift into park. It’s risky. The snow will make the ground slippery. And, Eddie thinks, if you fall and scrape your knee on these tracks, you’ll get tetanus for sure. 

Richie, also, doesn’t move to click the key out of the ignition. The dusty heat spills in from the grates, and they sit there. Fumes spit out the back pip into the atmosphere, another dirty cloud hanging under the trees. 

(Carbon monoxide, Eddie thinks. What about carbon monoxide? They’re outside and it’s not like they’re gonna sleep out here, but still. Could it fucking kill him? Could this?) 

“So, are we gonna do anything while we’re here?” Richie asks, an echo of another night, and Eddie has to wonder if Richie remembers. 

“I just don’t feel like going back yet.” Maybe Eddie can pretend like a train’s coming. Maybe he can pretend like they can make it onboard…

“Shit, man. You need a hobby or something. Something other than sitting down here with your hands down your pants." 

Eddie scoffs and rolls his eyes. “I don't even do that. You’re so disgusting.” 

“You used to come down here a lot.” 

“Well. I haven’t in a few years.” There wasn’t much point, not after the last few trains disappeared through the skyline, sitting and waiting for something that would never and could never actually come. 

“Then what kind of stuff do you do for fun these days?” 

Eddie snorts. “Fun?” 

“Sure. You remember ‘fun,’ don’t you? Like, did you ever get those tennis lessons?” 

“You remembered that?” Eddie's had the inclination, a dozen or so times, to march down to the YMCA, buy a membership, and sign up for a few classes. Last time, he’d gotten halfway there. But then he’d run out of HydrOx and had to go refill his prescription instead. 

(It’s tap water. It’s fucking tapwater, and he wasn’t able to stop himself anyway.) 

How was he supposed to learn to play tennis if he’d be unable to breathe the whole time? 

He remembers how, sometimes, he and the rest of the Losers would swim in the quarry. Sometimes, they’d go under, just to see who could hold their breath the longest. Sometimes, Eddie even won. (Though he’d never left his aspirator at home. It was always in his jacket pocket or fanny pack, just onshore.) 

Catching, Richie staring at him, waiting for an elaboration, Eddie shakes his head. “No, I never learned.” 

“Little ol’ Derry might not have a big gym, but I’m sure there’s some buffed-out fitness hottie who’d be more than willing to show you how to swing that racquet. Give you a little fun before you croak.” 

“Yeah, well, I’d ask you what you do for fun, but I don’t really wanna know every waking detail of your day.” 

“Joke’s on you. I have a very serious life. Very serious. They’re gonna turn it into a heartbreaking movie and everything.” 

“Sure you do, Rich.” 

“No, no! Really,” Richie asserts. And he swings his arm over to the headrest of Eddie’s seat, resting there. “If you listen closely, you can hear the sad violins.” 

Eddie bites his tongue.It’s not that funny, he tells himself. And he won’t give in. 

“Is that a laugh?” Richie asks, tapping at Eddie’s shoulder. “I think I see a laugh, Eddie!” 

“No. Shut up. No. I’m not laughing.” 

“Oh, yes you are.” 

“I’m really not.” 

And so it devolves, back and forth. - _Yes, you are, _and _No, I’m not _until all meaning is lost and they’re both, plainly and freely, laughing. Richie’s slumped back in the driver’s seat and Eddie rests the back of his head on the cold glass of the window. For a moment, between the meaningless bickering and the cores of his cheeks aching, Eddie finds himself thinking about his breathing. There’s a tightness in his chest. But, when he seeks air and finds it - instantly, His eyes follow the pattern, rise and fall, as he watches Richie’s chest move in tandem with his own. 

“See?” Richie says, cutting through the silence, “Everyone needs a little fun in their lives.” 

“Well, I’m gonna disappoint you.” 

It’s a joke. It’s honestly a joke. Things are pretty rough right now, but he’ll have more in him someday than banker’s checks and deposit slips and chemotherapy and needles. It’s just that, right now, it’s so all-consuming that it makes him itch sometimes. Sometimes it feels like his skin is shrinking against his innards. Like he’s starting to rot from the inside out. 

But still. Not everyone is smart enough to make a career out of optimism. Not everyone has the will to. 

And Richie’s looking at him, eyes squinting and mouth in something that’s maybe a grimace but otherwise unreadable, and he shakes his head, adjusting his glasses by the thick black frame. He twists the key in the ignition and the car mumbles to a stop. 

“No way,” Richie says, and he says it so fast, like he isn’t thinking about it. 

The distance between them, on opposite sides of Richie’s car, seems immense. Eddie shifts his weight and moves to lean his elbow on the center console. 

Eddie can feel the heat seeping out the windows. 

Richie seems to have a similar idea. They’re meeting in the middle and Richie’s looking at him in some indistinguishable way that makes Eddie’s chest constrict, but only in a way that makes him pull more air in. His eyes are shimmering in the dim, dim streetlight. He’s looking at Eddie like _Eddie’s _the one who’s hard to figure out. 

“What?” 

“Do you...do you remember the last time you dragged my ass all the way out here?” 

Eddie does. It’d been 1992. Just like tonight, it was cold. And, just like tonight, Eddie hadn’t wanted to be home. 

There'd been talk, briefly, about going to the clubhouse, but the woods were too hard to navigate in the darkness. Nobody else had wanted to come out on this starless November night. They all had their reasons, of course. Ben had a game on Saturday. Beverly was still in Portland. Mike had to be up early to help on the farm. Stanley was taking the S.A.T early. Bill had to work, and Freese’s scheduled him for the morning shift. So, it was only him and Richie and the old rusty train tracks and the facsimile of darkness. 

His mother always warned him to come home before dark. _You never know who’s waiting for the chance to hurt you, Eddie-bear._ And the dark was unpredictable, yes, but it’s anonymous. 

The snow crunched under his feet, reflected into the sky a dull ashy gray haze. Almost glowing in its light. Richie bumps him with his shoulder, and he asked, “Oy, are we gonna do anything while we’re here?”

“Just wait.” 

They were far enough out into nothingness that there were no trash can fires in sight, and no sounds other than the crunch of their boots in the snow. They were far enough out that not much could matter. 

It was the end of November and Eddie had just turned sixteen. He’d always been ticking clock. He’d had pneumonia when he was a baby and spent weeks in a big plastic box with a cleared oxygen mask tied around his head. That was the Eddie Kaspbrak Creation Myth. 

Except - not exactly myth because the oxygen mask happened. Ma gave him proof, every year, in the photo album. The photographs were otherworldly - his chubby baby fists clenched, small and pale and faded. “I almost lost you, Eddie-bear,” Ma would say, each year. “I thought you might just fade away if I didn’t hold you tight enough.” 

And, if that was the case, it seems awfully masochistic that she’d take photographs and immortalize them between layers of clear plastic film in the photobook. 

A few weeks prior, as Eddie and his ma were going through the ritual, she looked back from the album, at him, and frowned. “What’s that on your face?” 

Eddie felt around his lymph nodes. Nothing. Up to his cheeks. Nothing felt out of the ordinary, except for a scratchy patch of wiry hair just on the plane of his jaw. “Must’ve missed a spot shaving.” 

Ma frowned. Heaved herself up onto her feet, weighing down her slippers into the worn carpet. “Well. Make sure you go slowly and that you’re very careful with sharp things. ” 

And then, back on the train tracks, the cold snow under his feet bit through the rubber sole of his boot. Eddie shook away the memory, led away by an overzealously heavy panting. Eddie blinked around for the sound, and finds its source beside him. 

Richie breathed hotly on his bare knuckles, stuffed them back into his pockets. He hadn’t brought mittens, and Eddie was about to rub it in, with his own fingers pleasantly warm in wool, but then the whistle sounded far away. And Eddie peeked to the horizon, a pinpoint of light - growing bigger and bigger and bigger. He could hear the locomotive chugging. 

_ \-- chug chug chug rmmmth thump chug chug chug--_

Richie’s laugh was a loud, melodic kind of braying. 

“Did you seriously drag me out here at one in the morning just to watch a fuckin’ train? Can’t we just watch PBS and called it good?” 

“No. Fuck off.” And, waiting for the train to come closer, he said, in the anonymous black-gray comfort in the air. “They barely come around here anymore. ” 

“And that’s a bad thing?” 

“Yes.” 

Richie turned to him, and knocked on his forehead, fist cold against his skin. He threw on his faux British accent: “Tuppence fer yah thawts, mah good suh?” 

“That’s not even a fucking saying. ” Eddie frowned. And, then, admitted: “I used to think about hopping into one of the open cars and seeing how far it’d take me. ” 

“Like on TV? With the bandana on the stick?” 

Eddie laughed, abruptly, nodding once. “Yeah.” 

Richie’s glasses reflected off the snow as he looked at Eddie. Light beamed in the lens. The train was getting closer. “Why don’t you?” 

Because it might be fucking romantic in theory. But the reality would have been freezing to death in a freight car, huddled with bags of potatoes or barrels of half-alive lobsters clicking and crawling inside. 

Because his teeth would fall out. 

Because when out-of-breath boys with soft faces run away, they try to make it to the ocean or the city or where-the-fuck-ever. And they always end up blowing some sweaty trucker to get there. 

Eddie didn’t want to think about that. 

“I was never fast enough to catch them,” he said, instead. 

The locomotive rung, chugged, louder and louder - closed and the light grew brighter and brighter. The grayness of the night gained color, washed out in the brightness. Richie’s coat was brown leather, but his sweatshirt underneath was a dark red-orange. It’d looked black before. 

Richie smiled a half sort of smile. “Well, now’s your fucking chance, Eds. Don’t blow it! Run, mah boy! Run like the wind!” 

The horn blew. The train sped past, loudly. Snow flew up and Eddie could feel his bangs whip around his face as the cars chugged past. It was so fast he could barely make out the individual train cars. The wind whipped up the snow and it shook the foundation of Derry under their feet. 

The train thrummed, horn blowing, and car after car flew by. 

_ \-- chuff chuff chug chug -- _

Eddie - over all that - could hear his heart up in his ears. Out of the corner of his eyes, he could see Richie looking at him. 

Richie was looking at him and it was...

It was... 

Eddie stood, still as a rock. He saw - saw so vividly, the orange on Richie’s shirt. 

Richie ticked his head to the side. “Um. Eds? Earth to Kaspbrak?” 

Somehow, in the whirring of the train car, Eddie was swept up in the breeze. He’d gone up on his toes and kissed the corner of Richie’s mouth. 

Then, the train was gone. It was over and they were left in the wake.

Eddie pulled back. He hadn’t meant to do it. He was going to fall back on his heels -- he honestly was -- and make something up fast, but Richie had a hand on his jaw. He wasn’t _holding_ him there, nothing like that. But, he was sliding his fingers down the bone like it meant something important. Eddie’s hands clung to both sides of his face. Eddie kissed him again. Richie held him by his hips. The bridge Eddie’s nose hit Richie’s glasses and, before he knew what he was doing, Eddie took them off. Held them in his mittens. 

Eddie’s mouth was covered in spit, and the air was so dehydrated. He could feel the viruses coming for him. Bam. Right up the nose. 

Right up the… 

Richie kept on kissing him, and Eddie leaned into it, humming. He ached. Richie’s mouth was warm and wet against the cold air. 

Eddie knew he was going to get the flu because of this. 

_ (It’s what you get, Eddie, dear, when you do these things to yourself. ) _

And that was terrifying. Eddie pulled away. Richie whimpered like a kicked animal. “What?” 

Eddie might have told him, but he was warm, pressed up against Richie. There wasn’t any hiding the details - how much his chest was heaving, the embarrassment pressing between them, the dubious thrill hurdling him towards something beyond the edge of their sad little town. 

But he exhaled, and before he could even start to think he said the simplest, easiest thing to say. He said, “Shut up, Richie. ” 

And, as much as he was curious to kiss Richie again, the perverse ideal of hauling Richie back to his father’s Impala burned into his brain, that was the end of it.

In the end, on the car ride back to Eddie’s, they’d decided that there was nothing to tell the Losers because nothing happened, and there was nothing wrong, and, if Eddie took a hit off his aspirator, it was because it was the time of year to be nervous about rhinovirus anyway. 

And it’s the same time of year today, almost ten years later, and that’s why Eddie’s white-knuckle grip on his aspirator is so tight when he finally gets the balls to answer Richie’s question. “I remember. Do you?” 

“Oh, your weird train-fetish? Your fuckin’ homemade mittens? I remember all right.” 

Eddie goes to push him, and rolls his eyes, and something must’ve gotten between them and the streetlamp (an owl, maybe?) because for a moment everything’s all shadow. 

And then Richie asks, “Why’d you kiss me?” 

“_You_ kissed _me_,” Eddie lies. Because, frankly, that’d make sense. Richie was always doing stupid shit when they were kids. Always jumping in without thinking. There was no proof of who did what to who and they always say it’s innocent until proven guilty.

“Well, yeah, it takes two to tango, bud. Otherwise, it’s just…” With a loose fist, Richie pantomimes masturbation in the air above his crotch. 

Eddie’s glad he has a reason to roll his eyes, to look away. 

“Because this feels like either the beginning of a slasher or a porno, and if this goes the way it did last time, I’m gonna end up with the blue balls for the ages.” 

“Or, like, _dead. _You forgot about the slasher part.” 

“And here I thought you’d bone me before you’d murder me. Good to know where you stand, Eds.” Richie slaps a hand against his heart. And he reaches and pulls at the collar of his outer layer, exposing a soft t-shirt under it all. He throws himself over the center console, halfway in his seat and halfway flung out across them. He’s going to hit something on the dash and mess up the settings, Eddie just knows it. “Come on, Eddie! Let’s get this over with! Stab me in the chest!” 

Eddie shoves at him. “Get off--you _asshole!” _

But Richie keeps on throwing himself over the console. He’s all limbs and throwing himself over and goading him, laughter vibrating through the air, “Come on! Do it! Do it!” 

And, it’s so easy to forget about gravity under orange lights. Eddie sees an opening and, not thinking about it, he’s got his fist curled in front of Richie’s coat. 

Kissing him - like last time - is so fucking easy, it’s easy to forget about 

(Eddie once kissed Sally Mueller during Spin the Bottle at a party he hadn’t wanted to go to. He had an asthma attack and swore for the next week he’d gotten mono.) 

anything other than this. 

And Richie pulls back, abrupt. Eddie’s lungs constrict, and he’s instinctively reaching for his aspirator. 

“Eddie, that ...that wasn’t a dare or anything.” 

“I know.” 

He means to ask a question. Maybe he’ll ask where dares came into the mix in the first place. 

But- he kisses Richie again, hand still firmly knotted in his coat. Their mouths are awkward and incongruous and Richie’s kissing him back. Richie’s fingertips brush against the side of his face, for a moment, but then Eddie hears a few fingers clamp onto the dashboard.

Richie kisses back. All pull, no push. It’s cavernous and wet and viruses travel like this, in fluid. One hundred different species can live inside a human mouth. One hundred thousand individual bacterium. 

\-- but, fuck. 

Richie goes slack. Open. Eddie, on an impulse he will not allow himself to think about, pushes his tongue along Richie’s bottom lip. 

And, after that? It all goes wild. Richie tastes like nicotine, like sugar, like all the things that make your teeth fall out. Eddie knows it doesn’t make any sense, but he kisses again anyway. 

Richie’s free hand, the one that isn’t on the dashboard, flies up to his hair. Eddie can’t help but wonder, what it’d feel like, deep in his roots, for Richie to pull on them. But, he doesn’t. Richie just leaves his hand there, docile and sweet and fanning through the strands as though Eddie can slip through them. Richie’s scratchy-stubbly face presses against Eddie’s. It’s rugged as shit, and Eddie never thought he’d ever use that word to describe Richie, but here he is. 

It’s like someone switched on his ignition. He’s ready to hum. Vibrate. Fucking _zoom. _Give him the highways. Give him open road. Give him Richie. Give Richie him.

He’ll take it. For once in his life, he’ll take it. 

“Holy shit, Eddie.--” 

They break off. Richie doesn’t let go, his hand still docile and placed in Eddie’s hair. Eddie’s still grabbing onto Richie’s shirt like he’s got something to prove. 

But, he doesn’t. 

Honest. He’s got nothing to prove and, Richie’s straddling the center console, and it can’t be comfortable for his bundles of limbs, and that’s why Eddie asks, ticking his head to the backseat, “Should we go back there?” 

Richie shoots back from the center, like a mad, lanky octopus sliding through tiny holes. Eddie circles around and slams the car door behind him. 

Tomorrow, Ma’s got another check-up at the hospital. Next week, it’s another cycle of chemo and Richie’s going to be about as far away as another person can be in this country. Eddie’s going o have to sit with his ma while the rest of her hair falls out and the vomit bucket fills up and he’s going to have to-- 

_ Don’t think about that right now. Jesus, what the fuck is wrong with you? _

Richie’s looking at him, but not in the usual way. He’s frowning. “If you wanna stop…” 

“Shush.” 

And Eddie climbs up on top of Richie. Even the backseat is cramped in the mess of their limbs. Richie’s leaning against the window and he has one leg propped up on the driver’s seat and the other folded up beside them. 

It isn’t clean to do this in the back of a car. Eddie doesn’t even know how often Richie gets it detailed. There are probably months-old French fries just tucked under the seat. 

They’ve almost been here before. Almost. 

Eddie is twenty-five years old. And, for everything in him, he wishes he could be as sure about anything as he’d been at sixteen. He’d been sure he’d get the hell out of town, for good. He was sure he’d stop taking the sugar pills, and that he’d get on one of those trains someday. Maybe even he’d thought that he and Richie could… 

_( -- “Hey, Eds, do we need to talk about--” _

_“No. No. We absolutely do fucking not.” _

_“Oh ...oh. Okay. I just thought…”) _

And, maybe he’s not so sure. Maybe everything’s unpredictable. But he’s drawn here, climbing into Richie’s lap in the backseat of a fucking car like some kind of a hooker, and he won’t think about that. 

The light is orange. And no trains are coming around. No fires in the trash bins. They’re alone. Among the snow, and -- maybe he can even pretend he’s sure about something. Maybe he can pretend this isn’t going to make him sick. 

Maybe he can pretend like he isn’t already. Like he hasn’t got the contagion that’s making Richie kiss him back like this, strong and wet and pulled back into a smile, like he’s about to crack another joke, but it doesn’t come. 

_You don’t kick a gift-horse in the face, _Eddie thinks, but realizes he misses the moment. But, he wouldn't dare let that on, and so he runs his hands down Richie’s chest. He’s soft to the touch, and warm, and they’re closed off, in the backseat of some red beater of a car. Between four metal walls and behind two rigid navigational seats and, Eddie’s thighs are on either side of Richie’s hips and he’s pressed up close to him. And he can feel Richie’s erection pressing at his thigh before he notices with a tight-numb dizziness, that, well - _yes. _

Shit. Eddie’s hard. Richie’s hard. 

So it seems this: there’s more mutualism in erotica than Eddie really wants to admit.

Richie pulls his glasses off. He throws them into the driver’s seat, and Eddie hopes that he won’t forget about them and sit on them when they finally return. 

It’d be fun, maybe, to imagine they’re going somewhere after this. 

The coast. The city. Someplace. Elsewhere. 

Richie’s hands slide up the back of his sweater. And the cold hits his back with a shudder. It only makes him slid up closer to Richie. Too much exposure to the air and it’ll all implode -- it’s too cold out for this. Eddie can imagine what Richie’s going to say next (“_Pull my dick out and it’s gonna be like a turtle in a shell!”). _

Eddie moves in closer to Richie, to share body heat, and - again - he feels the incessant pulling smile at Richie’s lips. And, damned curiosity, killing the damned cat, he asks: “What are you smiling about?” 

Richie blinks at him. Everything’s altered under the streetlight, but Eddie’s suddenly so acutely aware that Richie’s eyes are blue. Like the sky. Like the vanishing point at the horizon, where the trains used to go. 

“I’m just having a fun time.” Richie says. “I haven’t had a good round of tonsil hockey in a while. Especially after your mom dumped--” 

Eddie straightens his back and he’s half a second from thrusting himself to the other side of the car. But he says, softly, almost at a whisper: “Don’t ruin it.” 

“Sorry,” Richie says, and - Eddie thinks that maybe he means it. 

Eddie’d be lying if he said any of that mattered anyway. It might not be as easy to guess what he wants, and maybe it’s selfish, to give in. But it’s so much easier - and so much better - to pull Richie’s coat open at the buttons. To lift his flannel and t-shirt on his chest and watch the goose pimples break out over his arms. To look down and see him heaving. To suppress the urge to fan his hand out over his chest hair and ask him something stupid like _When the hell did this happen? _

Instead, he slides off Richie’s coat and throws it onto the dirty car floor. They’ll pick it up later, along with all the consequences. 

Implications. Disease. All the things the hold long warty hands with Want. 

“It’s a little cold here, man.” Richie says. But he maneuvers his coat so it’s encircling them like a kind of makeshift cocoon, as well as it can. It’s humid and warm and Eddie leans in. 

Eddie can’t breathe. But he won’t reach for his aspirator (his fanny pack fell off, Eddie isn’t even aware how long ago. Probably around the time that his shirt got all rumpled and his fly came undone). Instead, he kisses Richie harder. 

And, maybe it’s because of how insistently Richie’s smiling, but Eddie’s smiling too. It pulls their kisses taut and he doesn’t want to indulge this in himself, this idea that maybe this is as simple as watching trains go by or swimming at the quarry, but he doesn’t know how to stop. 

Eddie hasn’t been able to think about it too much at all before an excited indulgence forces his excitement. 

“Wait,” Richie says, before Eddie’s hand can reach his buttons. “Are you sure?” 

The sincerity - while not entirely unheard of - sends Eddie’s guts on a whirl. “Yeah.” 

Eddie can feel it boiling up. Flight. Fight. Freeze. And, pushing past it, scouring for another option. One that hasn’t already been writ for him yet. He gets to the buttons, and Eddie’s hand catches. Richie reaches down and pulls his zipper down with a strangled grunt. He pulses against his own restraints. 

Eddie laughs. “Well, you’re not subtle.” 

“Have I ever been?” Richie begins, laugh already forming in his mouth, and it all floods out when Eddie’s slides over him. He's warm against his palm. It shuts Richie right the fuck up, right there, pressing his lips together like he's got a secret. 

Eddie might have it in him to snicker, might have it in him to make fun, but all he can bring himself to do is throw his free hand around Richie’s neck and kiss him again. Press him further into the car door. Throw his hand up to the window and come back with frost-scars and a phantom imprint of what they’ve done. What they’re _doing. _

Breathless, Richie laughs. And, then, he presses his hands against Eddie’s knuckles and pushes him off. “Wait.” 

Eddie pulls back, ready to apologize. Ready to remind him that it’s just as well because he’s not sure how to properly clean the backseat of a car. 

But then Richie’s dumb trashmouth moves again. He asks: “Can I touch you first?” 

Eddie doesn’t mean to laugh. Maybe it’s cruel to. But he doesn’t know what else to do, before he plucks Richie’s hand off his hip and, in a dazy disoriented stupor, licks Richie’s hand from the heel of his palm to the tips of his fingers (germs, germs. So many germs. He’d just been touching the steering wheel--) 

His skin tastes salty - not sweaty, but warm. And Eddie leads Richie’s hand where it wants to go. 

Eddie’s hand lies over Richie’s. The machine of their hands, joined on him, pull. Eddie’s knuckles brush against Richie’s hips and Richie gives a sort of low exhale, his mouth a perfect little O. And - god fucking dammit - Eddie might as well leave all the problems that come along with Want at the door. 

Problems or no, it’s worth it. Worth this. 

Richie opens his mouth against Eddie’s and, at one time or two, breathes deep into Eddie’s mouth. No tongue, no lips. Nothing but the clash of carbon dioxide mingling between their lips. 

Eddie’s hand slides down, moves to circle Richie’s bicep, as Richie takes over. He’s kissing Eddie’s neck and jerking him off, and Eddie shivers into him. He’s rubbing up against him in a frenzy. Unthinking. Hysterical. 

But -- oh. There it is. He’s breathing. 

And, yes. He wants again. 

What? Frankly... anything. Everything. But mostly this. 

If it were possible, Eddie would inhale - forever - and nothing else. No exhale. No release. 

Richie’s hand moves, fast with practice, against him and Eddie can feel the car move with them as he sighs and sputters and turns himself inside out. 

Though it all, Richie doesn’t stop kissing him. Edde won’t stop breathing in, hot as hell and tightening around him. He’s practically flying through the air. 

Eddie comes in a flush of heat, with light dotting pinpricks behind his eyes. His mouth presses against Richie’s in a flurry of expletives. He spills into Richie’s hand. And when Richie pulls away, white webs string between his fingers. 

It’s sticky with microorganisms. 

Richie wipes it away on the outside leg of his jeans and Eddie can’t help the way his nose curls. There will still be residue on his fingertips. 

“What’s wrong?” Richie asks. 

“‘s just gross.” Eddie could almost laugh. _What a pair we make_. He doesn’t know where that thought comes from. 

Instead of indulging it further, though, he opts to dry out the sticky feeling. The nose-crinkling, nauseous, tight-chest asthmatic feeling left behind from all the things that spill out of him. 

And he does it by turning back to Richie, by looking past his blind bewilderment and kissing him again. Richie kisses him back, and Eddie refuses to hyperfixate, instead, in a delayed sort of stupor says, “Do you want me to?” 

He kisses Richie and doesn’t think about how much he needs a shower. 

Richie’s hot and pulsing against his hand, and Eddie’s delirious with the weight of it. With the feeling of Richie keening and whining into his hands. He’s not even trying to be funny or do anything. He’s just… 

Holding Eddie close. Rolling up his hips and throwing himself to Eddie.

And, if Eddie were better, he’d tell him not to bother. Because Eddie feels every inch of stickiness on himself. He feels every burning inch of skin on Richie. And Richie is Richie and Richie shouldn't have to deal with all Eddie's bullshit, and it’s gonna give Eddie a fucking asthma attack. 

(Privately, to himself - Eddie can admit that the asthma’s bullshit. His immune system is fine. Any allergies he has are seasonal and mild. He’s known since he was twelve. He just can't imagine any world where his mother isn’t spoon-feeding him castor oil, where he doesn’t have bulging ulcers taking over, pushing out of his skin--) 

_Stop it. Don’t think about that right now. Think of anything else. _

Eddie’s not ill. He never was. But maybe he _is _a little sick. 

And, moreover, he definitely _could _be. 

He sighs and Richie shakes his head, delirious in the motion, panting out, “Are--are you--” 

“Shut up. I'm good.” 

Eddie kisses him, and - for a brief moment - he can answer the question honestly. Richie’s mouth is warm and he’s holding onto him and the weight in Eddie’s chest doesn’t feel like an anvil. It’s more like an engine, humming and vibrating. Maybe it’s a heart murmur. Maybe he’ll die from it tonight. 

Even so, if Richie were to ask him, right now, in this nanosecond, if he was okay, the answer would be yes. And he’d be entirely, completely, honest. 

Eddie’s consumed, for a moment, with a twitch in his hips. With the knowledge that there are train tracks just three meters away, ready to take him (and them) off to the seashore or the city and maybe he can do this. Just fucking _maybe_ he can do this. 

Richie’s actually kind of beautiful with his head resting back against a foggy window, panting and twitching to Eddie and murmuring shit like, “..._can’t believe...really happening...oh, fuck, Eddie...” _

Eddie never knew his name could sound so clear. 

So yes. If Richie asked him, _right now, _if he was okay, Eddie could say, “I’m perfect,” and be entirely honest. 

He’d just need to ask fast. 

He doesn’t ask. Not this time. And that’s okay. 

Really. It’s fine. Eddie doesn’t need the affirmation anyway. 


End file.
